Post #1044594

Despite effective antiretroviral treatment, HIV remains in the body in a dormant form, known as the viral reservoir. This reservoir is the main reason HIV cannot currently be cured. In the study, researchers at Karolinska Institutet investigated whether the gut microbiota—the bacteria living in the gut—might be linked to the size of this reservoir. The study included 30 people living with HIV who had been on long-term antiretroviral treatment. The researchers analyzed blood samples to measure levels of intact HIV DNA and combined these data with detailed profiling of the participants' gut microbiota using whole-metagenomic sequencing. The results show that certain bacterial species and metabolic processes in the gut differed between individuals with larger and smaller HIV reservoirs. "We observed that specific patterns in the gut microbiota were associated with differences in the size of the HIV reservoir. This suggests that interactions between the body and the microbiome may influence how much virus remains in a dormant state" https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-04-gut-bacteria-linked-latent-hiv.html